Contrast-Enhanced CT of the Coelom in a Female Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus): Development of a Preliminary CT-Based Anatomical Segmentation Workflow

This case study describes a contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) examination of the coelom in a female bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) and presents a structured CT-based workflow for anatomical identification and segmentation. CT images were acquired using standard imaging protocols and subsequently processed on a dedicated DICOM workstation. Multiplanar reconstructions (MPR) were generated in the transverse, sagittal, and dorsal planes to assess anatomical relationships. Maximum-intensity projection (MIP) images were generated from the MPR datasets, whereas three-dimensional volume-rendered (3D VR) images were generated directly from the CT volume. Anatomical segmentation was performed using the resulting MIP and 3D VR datasets. Anatomical structures were identified directly from the imaging data and manually segmented. The resulting segmentations were organised into a layer-based dataset to ensure consistency and traceability across the anatomical regions. This workflow provides a structured framework for the identification and organisation of anatomical structures within CT-derived datasets. An interactive visualisation environment was developed to facilitate the exploration of the segmented data, enable the dynamic display of labelled anatomical structures, and support the interpretation of the segmentation results. This study therefore presents a preliminary CT-based approach to anatomical segmentation in an avian species and may contribute to improved anatomical delineation and image interpretation in similar applications. The methodology may also support the development of analogous segmentation approaches for other avian species and related imaging applications.